Category Archives: LEDs

I want to say this up front. Donald Trump is an environmental and an alternative energy nightmare. The current attempt to roll back restrictions on Mercury emissions is just the latest killing of Americans. It is important to celebrate the good news as well as the bad.

Throughout 2018, efforts to protect habitats and conserve threatened species were driven by governments, scientists, NGOs and indigenous communities.

The world pledged more conservation funding to protect the oceans, while protections for coastal ecosystems were also boosted.

Conservation initiatives steered by indigenous communities continue to garner attention and praise, not least because they tend to be more sustainable and effective than top-down programs.

These were among the upbeat, happy environmental and conservation stories we reported on in 2018.

“I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces of puzzle scattered all over the place. If you look at the whole picture it is overwhelming and terrifying, but if you work on your little part of the jigsaw and know that people all over the world are working on their little bits of it, that’s what will give you hope,” Jane Goodall, the world-renowned primatologist and conservationist and Mongabay adviser, says in a post on her Facebook page.

Hope for global conservation is what we wish to evoke in our readers with some of the more upbeat environmental stories from the past year that we have pieced together from around the world in this list. These include some of your favorite happy stories, from the expansion of protected areas for wildlife, cancelled reclamation projects that posed coastal ecosystem threats, to the impactful role of indigenous communities in conservation.

1. More protection for wildlife corridors

On a housekeeping note, websites contact me all the time to say, you cite this source: this one is better or more up-to-date or broken and here we fixed it. they want inserted in the actual Blog post that relates directly to their “improvement”. I AM ONE guy. I can neither verify what they say is true OR get in edit mode and go back in time for years. So, I am going to post them here as addenda. Click on them and see what surprise you get.

I am so amazed by this, that I do not know what to say. I wish these type projects had started 30 years ago. You would say, impossible. I would say the technology would have been different and the work harder, but it could have been done. Still I am so proud of Renault and I hope more companies try this out. GO Renault!

Renault’s ‘smart island’ runs on wind power and recycled batteries

Renault has launched a “smart island” in Portugal that uses its Zoe electric vehicle, home batteries, smart charging and vehicle-to-grid (V2E) energy storage to run without fossil fuels. The idea is to make the Madeira island of Porto Santo energy independent and stimulate renewable energy production. “[We want] to build a model that can be carried over to other islands and cities,” Renault Electric Vehicle Director Eric Feunteun told Engadget.

Unlike Tesla’s massive Powerpack installation, the Renault project is more of a community endeavor on the small (16 square mile) and sparsely populated (5,483 inhabitants), tourism-oriented island. It will unroll in three phases: In the first, 20 fortunate Porto Santo volunteers will get 14 Zoes and six Kango Z.E. utility vans to use every day. They’ll benefit from 40 new connected public and private charging stations set up by Renault and local utility Empresa de Electricitade da Madeira (EEM).

“Let’s say you come home from work at 7 PM with a decent charge left, and only need two to three hours of charging,” said Feunteun. “The smart charging system we’re testing will decide when the best time to do that is, based on usage, energy availability and other factors. Then, it can charge up to eight times a day in chunks as small as 15 minutes.”

I am a graduate of Sangamon State University. What is now University of Illinois Springfield. They just build a Student Union and I am so proud of it. It could be LEED certified and it is student centered. Our Student Union was in a temporary building 0n the temporary campus “down the hill”. This is just so cool.

Environmentally Excellent

UIS is seeking a LEED Gold certificate (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council), both for the sake of the environment and in order to take advantage of energy saving measures. For this reason, the building will have a green, or “living,” roof with vegetation and a growing medium over a sloped membrane. This roof will provide insulation, help to lower air temperatures, and last much longer than other roofs—50 to 60 years rather than the 20 to 30 years most roofs last. The vegetation will most likely include wildflowers that will change throughout the growing season, adding to the building’s beauty.

To reduce storm runoff and eliminate water irrigation, the Student Union will have a rainwater reclamation system that takes advantage of the roof’s slope. Also in consideration of LEED approvals, lighting will be designed to meet the USGBC’s very stringent requirements.

I agreed to publish this here because it is such a different perspective then the one I have or CES has. We tend to blame builders for not just serving up top notch energy efficient residences. Then there is the issue of retrofitting. As always this is no endorsement of Ryan or his Real Estate firm. Believe me I have no intention of buying a home in Alaska.

More Buyers Are Looking for Energy Effcient Homes in the US… But is it

Enough?

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Now, a “green home” really isn’t all that green when observed on its own, but the fact

remains that most of new construction and existing homes are going to be detached

single-family residences. This means that we need to do the best we can with the hand we

have been dealt, and that would suggest that incremental improvements across the board

may be the best option in terms of reducing waste. Recent trends in US real estatehave

affected what buyers are looking for in some positive ways, but there are still far too few

green homes available for buyers who want this option.!That makes it a frustrating search

for potential green home buyers, and discourages them from truly setting their sites on a

home that works for them. Additionally, because they aren’t making their voices heard,

many builders are not working to make homes that meet green specications (beyond the

bare minimum). They don’t realize the level of demand that would be there, if buyers felt

they would have the option.

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More Buyers Should Push for Green Homes

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There’s really one way to remedy the issue:buyers who want green homes should push

for them across as many channels as they can. If more buyers continue to ask for green

homes, more builders will produce these homes out of necessity. But buyers need to be

the catalysts in both demand and advocacy aimed toward other potential green buyers.

More of them want green homes, but they back down when they see these homes aren’t

available. Builders and sellers both need to know the value of creating these kinds of

homes or making changes to existing homes, so buyers will be more likely to purchase

those homes instead of other options. This might mean more negotiations with sellers and builders, and it will likely come at an increased cost — costs that will likely be recouped over time, but another upfront cost nonetheless.

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What are Buyers Looking For?

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When the average buyer!wants a green home, they don’t necessarily require one that’s

completely off grid. Some buyers will seek these out, but most will be looking for energy

efifciency, sustainable materials, and a smaller carbon footprint than what would be seen

with a standard house. In many cases, that’s enough to entice buyers to make a purchase,

and to keep them happy with the home they have selected. It also depends on the area of the country and the local market, because some buyers want and need different options due to weather or other factors.

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More Demand Will Require an Increase in Supply

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The more buyers start asking for green homes, the more likely it is that builders will create them. Sellers will also start making changes to the homes they are putting on the market, in order to entice buyers to come see their home instead of a different one. That’s an important consideration, too, sincesellers may need to retrofit their homes in some ways and add options that they would not have chosen to put in if they were remaining in the house. Some green living changes can be expensive, but these changes don’t always have to be costly. There are lower priced options, as well.

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Trends are Moving in the Right Direction, at Least

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Even though there are still far too few green homes, and even though buyers aren’t making their voices heard as loudly as they could, the trend of green living is still going in the right direction. More buyers see the value of it, and more builders and sellers are starting to make changes in that direction. There is still a long way to go before energy efficiency and reducing waste becomes the standard for new homes and improved existing homes, but a larger pool of buyers demanding these features can help move the needle bit by bit.

Like I have always said, is there such a thing as an environmentally friendly car? I prefer to think instead of minimal impact on the environment. Really given all of the mining that goes on just to produce cars and all the fossil fuels it takes to fuel them, we would be better off without them. Mass transportation is the only hope for the future.

Hybrid and Electric Cars 2017-2018: The Best and the Rest

Interested in a hybrid or an electric vehicle to help save gasoline, and possibly the planet, too? The vehicles that wear an Editors’ Choice badge are our picks for the best hybrids and best EVs of 2017 and 2018.

Toyota Prius C

The Editors’ Rating summarizes a vehicle’s overall degree of excellence and is determined by our editors, who evaluate hundreds of vehicles every year and consider numerous factors both objective and subjective.

Editors’ Rating

Starting at

$21,035

Take the uninspired underpinnings of the Toyota Yaris and mix with it an even less powerful version of the Prius hybrid powertrain and you get the Prius C.

Honda CR-Z

The Editors’ Rating summarizes a vehicle’s overall degree of excellence and is determined by our editors, who evaluate hundreds of vehicles every year and consider numerous factors both objective and subjective.

Editors’ Rating

Starting at

$21,130

The CR-Z is an ambitious attempt at making a sporty hybrid, but its performance doesn’t match its adventurous styling.

Hyundai Ioniq

The Editors’ Rating summarizes a vehicle’s overall degree of excellence and is determined by our editors, who evaluate hundreds of vehicles every year and consider numerous factors both objective and subjective.

Editors’ Rating

Starting at

$23,035

Sharing its underpinnings with the Kia Niro, the Hyundai Ioniq is a hybrid in many flavors.

Mitsubishi i-MiEV

The Editors’ Rating summarizes a vehicle’s overall degree of excellence and is determined by our editors, who evaluate hundreds of vehicles every year and consider numerous factors both objective and subjective.

Power to the People

Why the rise of green energy makes utility companies nervous.

Mark and Sara Borkowski live with their two young daughters in a century-old, fifteen-hundred-square-foot house in Rutland, Vermont. Mark drives a school bus, and Sara works as a special-ed teacher; the cost of heating and cooling their house through the year consumes a large fraction of their combined income. Last summer, however, persuaded by Green Mountain Power, the main electric utility in Vermont, the Borkowskis decided to give their home an energy makeover. In the course of several days, coördinated teams of contractors stuffed the house with new insulation, put in a heat pump for the hot water, and installed two air-source heat pumps to warm the home. They also switched all the light bulbs to L.E.D.s and put a small solar array on the slate roof of the garage.

The Borkowskis paid for the improvements, but the utility financed the charges through their electric bill, which fell the very first month. Before the makeover, from October of 2013 to January of 2014, the Borkowskis used thirty-four hundred and eleven kilowatt-hours of electricity and three hundred and twenty-five gallons of fuel oil. From October of 2014 to January of 2015, they used twenty-eight hundred and fifty-six kilowatt-hours of electricity and no oil at all. President Obama has announced that by 2025 he wants the United States to reduce its total carbon footprint by up to twenty-eight per cent of 2005 levels. The Borkowskis reduced the footprint of their house by eighty-eight per cent in a matter of days, and at no net cost.